kitchenmage

Five things to eat...

It's been a while since I've been tagged for a meme (maybe because I only do them intermittently) but Tara of the Three Tarts pinged me for this and it's one of the more useful memes I've seen in a while. Besides, I have a slightly different take on my answers so I'm going to play. Melissa of the ever-tempting Traveler's Lunchbox has asked for everyone's lists of five foods to eat before you die. The meme has been circulating for a month or so and the collected responses are...holy crap! I just went to grab the URL and it's at 1550 items to eat before you die!  That's one new thing a day for FIVE years! You no longer have an excuse for being bored with your food, go pick something off the list. Then go do it again. And again. And again. And again.

Cookies that you baked with a monstrrr (that would be a child for those of you without crib notes), especially if it's their first time baking their favorite cookies. I've made a point of telling visiting monstrrrs that we can bake any kind of cookies they want, even make something up if they'd like, and it is one of the surest hits ever. I've had twenty-somethings remind me of the day we baked their very special cookies — all of which end up named after the kids, "Kara's extra-cinnamon Snickerdoodles" and "TashiaDoodles" (since perfected on her own time) and such — and what we drank, and how the conversation has stuck with them years later. This is about so much more than cookies, they are simply the vehicle for awakening the knowledge of the wealth of experiences to be had when making and breaking bread with those we love. Plus, you often get a new cookie recipe out of it.

Something slightly unlikely with someone very special. One of my latest examples of this is vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries. It's not exactly gourmet — although there are no doubt restaurants selling french vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries for 7 bucks a serving (or would that be freedom vanilla with patriot berries?) — nor is it even unlikely in and of itself, but it was pretty unlikely at the time. And the perfect thing for the moment. The moment being 3am, which found the two of us, having just sent off chapters for the current book project and having a moment to relax, picking the berries by flashlight while some very confused kittens ran circles around our ankles.

Way too much of a favorite food. This is another thing that is perhaps best done with a child. I have fond memories of a couple of childhood food indulgences: strawberry shortcake dinners on the first day of strawberry season, a flat of Bing cherries on the first day of cherry season, the birthday child's choice of dinner and dessert. Oddly enough, we ended up with the same cake several times a year as one child after another chose "that chocolate cake, you know the one"...and we did know "the one" because it was the same as always. I should note that when I had a chance to have "the cake" at the Nut Tree Restaurant, which is the source of the recipe, it was just about identical to the one that we made.

A child's invented dish that makes you go "ick" Every kid has concocted something that they absolutely love and would eat every day that makes their parents retch. theKid's was hot dog and sharp cheddar omelettes with jelly; it had to be cheapish hot dogs (no hebrew national kosher for her) with Tillamook sharp cheddar (black label extra sharp if she could get it) and jelly, not jam. There is some aspect of this that totally squiks me out; maybe it's the insistence on jelly...or the cheap hot dogs...but ewwww, ick! I did have this once, well I had ONE bite of this once, and have managed to escape a repeat performance. Luckily for me, someoneElse was more cooperative and used to make two at a time so he could eat one with theKid...usually while I hid in another room.

Something that stretches your cooking skills  I almost made this 'homemade bread' but that's second nature for some folks and that's so not the point. Think of a food you really love but would never try making, then make it. Having been raised to be utterly fearless in the kitchen, I still find some pastries intimidating and have had to twist my own arm to make myself attempt them. Having lost my fear of danish and pie crusts, I'm moving on to something else...those gorgeous molded chocolates are looking more appealing lately, even though tempering chocolate seems tricky. But tricky is good. No tricky=no feeling of accomplishment.

Maybe you can see a pattern here. For me, food is about much more than food. It's about creation, sharing, indulgence, validation of individual quirks (even the ones that make you go ick). And if you help inspire a child to cook and enjoy good food you are doing a doubly good thing.

I'd tag someone but I am late to this party so most of you have already done this. Oh wait, Miz D. has been moving and busy, I'll be mean and tag her! And Cherry because she has more energy behind her collection of blogs than I can imagine.

But enough about food, let's talk about you

Swiping a meme here and warping it. I've seen it at a variety of places, seems all the popular kids are doing it, or will be soon. It's sort of an instantTag meme, since I get to ask the questions and you get to answer them in comments. This will either be enlightening as I discover more about you all or embarassing as I discover how few people read this thing...or both.

I'm not much for forced, or even peer-pressured, disclosure of personal data so I had to come up with a set of questions that I'd be comfortable answering. Seems only fair. Accordingly, I've collected a variety of versions from Sarah, Jen, Nanners, and Ali, picked some I liked and added some of my own. So here are my questions for you:

What's the smallest town you've ever lived in? (Give me a feel for it if you can; evenTinierTown is sooooo tiny that it impacts daily life in a lot of interesting and unexpected ways that are perhaps unique to tiny towns.)

Are there dishes you want to make but don't because they intimidate you somehow?

What is your proudest kitchen accomplishment?

Bread or chocolate?

If you could ask me to make any one food and blog about it, what would it be?

(...and the seemingly obligatory musical question)
Who is your favorite undiscovered singer/group? (Mine is someoneElse, who plays amazing guitar and has a couple of songs here... who knows, maybe someone will see this and discover him...)

So, who's first?

While the magic happens

Let's call this the kitchen photos meme, part two.

Time for the truth in advertising--and the actual homage to Belly-Timber and their messy kitchen. This is what my kitchen usually looks like. I snapped these one day just before we had out-of-town company 6 out of 8 days. It was, needless to say, crash time and a much more realistic example of what things look like when the mage starts casting multiple spells.

Let's take a quick tour starting on the left. Sourdough starter, broom because I was cleaning "between other things," canaloupe to be sliced and munched while I worked (or maybe it was for lunch), ice water for cold fermented bread, high-gluten flour for the sourdough, the blue pitcher had some tea thing steeping, and I think the mason jar has chocolate to be grated. The baking corner is mostly covered with an accumulation of flotsam (or is that jetsam?) from every time I needed space on some other surface, with the exception of the chopping block, which has habeneros to be chopped. In the distance, the two stockpots hold blueberry chutney that has not yet been habeneroed and something else I can't remember--maybe it was a second strength of chutney--we made warm and hot.

So what does that add up to? Two kinds of bread, something with chocolate, chutney to be cooked and canned, and whatever's in that other stockpot because, come to think of it, this wasn't that batch of chutney. Sounds pretty exhausting, huh?

On to the other side of the counter. Again, from the left. The cookbook is neither the Herbfarm nor Crust and Crumb, although it might be Breadbaker's Apprentice (which would be the pain la ancienne, the cold fermentation bread), and there is already bread rising in the basket under that blue patterned cloth, which I suppose explains the floured countertop...and brings me to three kinds of bread. That might help explain the three empty gallon containers strewn about.

The springform pan is buttered and wrapped for the water bath that is used to bake a mint truffle torte from the Herbfarm cookbook, and that pyrex bowl with the spoon on top has a butter and fresh chocolate mint infusion steeping--also destined for the torte--along with that bowlful of eggs. And the dishes are the clean half with a corresponding dirty pile on the other side of the sink. I believe that both of those cups had tea in them--one hot, one lukewarm and mostly undrunk--and the yogurt was probably lunch.

Three kinds of bread, one torte, one batch of chutney, one unknown pot of something, a messy kitchen, and I remember that clean 9x13 pan had brownies. And you know what? This is a moderate day, it seems to be mostly about baking, and I know there was another day when I did other prep work. There have been times that made this look like those oh-so-Sunset magazine shots in the last post. Those are fun.

Between the last post and this one, I feel so schizophrenic. Dr. Jekyll and Chef Hyde, perhaps?

Oh, one more thing while I have your attention. I failed to point out one of the best kitchen accessories a cook can have. Look at this picture and see if you can pick it out.

See it? Way back there in the background. Okay, so it's not exactly an accessory, but that's live music, boys and girls. Isn't that the best? I'm quite sure it makes me a better cook. I know it makes me a happier one.

Where the magic happens

I think we should call this a "clean your kitchen" meme--or am I the only one who looked at her kitchen and thought, "There is NO WAY I am putting pictures of this mess on the Internet!" and spent an hour or three making it clean enough to get the phots? I suppose I could have gone the Belly-Timber route and embraced my inner too-busy-to-clean person, but I've been needing decent photos of the house so that's my excuse. (I must admit that it's odd to have the place so shiny clean, as I'll demonstrate at the end of the pretty pictures.  

Here's the realtor (i.e., boring) shot of my kitchen. The lights are still truly lame, but I still haven't found anything I really like. That's okay because there are many things I do like--lots of counter space, open to most of the house, a convection oven, and did I mention the counter space?

23, 5, ramble

I feel a bit like I should draw a rune to go with this post, it's all so mystically numeric. Kayln of Kayln's Kitchen has tagged me for the latest meme, in which one counts 23 posts from the start of their blog, takes the 5th sentence, and goes deep.

Wish me luck.